as the clock strikes the bell tolls
clang
clang
clang
the steeple has never looked as high as it does
when you are standing on the tip
looking down at the cobblestones
there is no room in the temple
for the sinner
who does not repent
the

i watch jellyfish billow on the screen like souls floating across skies, their bells blooming as gracefully as bloodstains in bath water, and i reach through the pixels toward some form of salvation, some return that promises in the next life i’ll be something softer, something expansive, wounds

Turquoise vinyl siding
a green darker than any Carolina marsh.
Twenty steps up to the front door.
Fifteen more to the bedrooms.
Will the luggage make it to its destination?

A Prodigal daughter never returns home
She may enter its walls after her respite,
but is always a guest
to the ghost of her mother’s daughter

something breaks in the frozen night 
    tearing / you sit up and i stay

right here in these warm sheets
    you say i am pretty only because the word beautiful

Decorating a Christmas tree, 
Lights cast taught.
Seeing beads of light – asymmetrical, imperfect.

Grease in my hair and oil on my face, 
Piercing uncleanliness.
But sharper is the ground leading from bed to shower.

Over and over and spinning and spinning
The beiges are dancing in the machine
I sit on the dryer and wait so patiently
for the load to be done and restarted again.

at the end of the Earth
there is a dandelion plant
the corner of the sky rests on its bosom
our world relies on its strength

in girl scouts, they teach you sayings
ones you sing around the campfire
they’re supposed to teach lessons
“make new friends but keep the old
one is silver and the other is gold”
except no one remembers the silver
the second-place trophy
the insignificant

In the evenings, 
  Following sundown
     I observed you
        However,
            I never saw you

Your twinkle of light
  Alone –
     In the dead of night
    Impunity
     In absence from society

New

We wake up and feel the absence of warmth.

*** 
Waxing Crescent

Slowly now, we embrace
the blossoming light all around.
Was sleep an absence
from the world, or an immersion
in it? Eyes open, the lights
offer us their hands.

Salty wind pushes at the falling tide.
Blue serenity veils the town as a 
melancholy buzz flows through the idle docks.

A boat pushes through the harbor:
It drifts along, 
lazily down.

Prologue:

I

On a Thursday at the edge of summer and autumn, when constellations studded the sky, I carried a cup of tea into my study. It was a beautiful cup, hand-painted with buds about to burst into flowers.

A myriad of rushing footsteps erupt in the floor above; an orchestra of screeching and tapping performed by the disordered unison of business shoes and office furniture ...

the purple lights start to fade, the crowd dying with them.
     your eyes once hidden in the crowd glow vermilion,
     failing to camouflage themselves beneath the shadows
     of your white pupil, an outcast among the filthy onyx pupils

The second time I got married was the happiest day of my life. It was illegitimate and secretive. It was born of utter foolishness, but the joy that filled my heart that day was unrivaled by anything done before the eyes of the familiar.

Every day,
I walk a walk
I walk in the hot,
And in the cold,
I walk on grass,
And on the road
I walk under trees,
And under buildings.

I vividly remember
the rough feel of my closet’s carpeting beneath my fingers
as they traced lines and circles and stars
like the ones that filled the sky that night.

In a rare process called transdifferentiation, the turritopsis dohrnii 
(known as the immortal jellyfish) can, in response to physical danger, 
leap back to its first stage of life as a polyp. The born-again polyp 

I am a werewolf.
Waves of pain
Bitter transformation
I bite back
When nothing is wrong
Queasy ramblings
Crying in the bathroom
Clutching onto my stomach
I pray for forgiveness
Fur on my body
Shaved and prickly
Pushing down my nature

come to you in
cyclical relapse
with each syllable
escaping

muzzling silence
be tempted to borrow
its imprisonment and speak in
dialogues conversed by

friction of skins.

Suburban style van, with its stained coffee cup and sheaned sheets. The ceiling that sags and the mail tucked into the windshield, with the dent on the right of the bumper. The keys in the ignition, the fire has started. Will you drive?

The fountain reflects light
onto the face of the library downtown.
We went there once, a long time ago.
It still glows.